Child
study paints mixed picture for N.J.
State drops to 4th best place for
raising kids as affluence masks situation facing the
poor
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 • BY SUSAN K. LIVIO •
Star-Ledger Staff
With the nation's lowest school dropout
rate and the fourth lowest teen death rate, New Jersey is
one of the best places in the country to be a kid or raise a
kid -- as long as you're not poor, a report by a charitable
foundation said yesterday.
More Garden State families struggled to
make ends meet in 2003 than they did in 2000, pushing the
state's child poverty rate up from 10 percent to 12 percent,
according to the 15th annual Kids Count report by the Annie
E. Casey Foundation.
New Jersey ranked fourth overall in the
survey, sliding a notch from third place last year, the
state's best showing to date. Only New Hampshire, Vermont
and Minnesota scored higher than New Jersey. Mississippi
ranked last.
The report gave a mixed portrait of New
Jersey's families, noting that on average they are among the
wealthiest in the country -- with median earnings of $69,100
a year, $19,100 more than the nation as a whole -- and the
percentage of children living in poverty was fifth- lowest
in the nation. But the high cost of living takes a toll at
the lower end of the income scale, the report
said.
It found that 27 percent of New Jersey
children lived with unemployed parents, a 4 percent increase
from 2000. And seven in 10 low-income families -- defined as
two adults and two children living on $37,200 or less a year
-- pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing.
Nationally, the figure is six in 10.
The state's affluence "masks the reality
for a lot of kids in New Jersey," said Nancy Parello,
spokeswoman for the Association for Children of New Jersey,
a family advocacy group based in Newark.
The Casey Foundation, a child welfare
think tank and philanthropy based in Baltimore, identified
four factors that keep struggling families poor: domestic
violence, depression, substance abuse and prior
incarceration. Among New Jersey's welfare population, for
instance, half of the parents who suffered from a drug
addiction also lived with clinical depression, and one in
three had been victims of sexual abuse, the foundation said,
citing a 2002 study.
"One of the biggest challenges children
face is the growing rate of incarceration among adults,
particularly in urban areas," said Kenneth Zimmerman,
executive director of the New Jersey Institute for Social
Justice. He noted that the number of adults in prison across
the country quadrupled, from 500,000 in 1980 to 2.1 million
in 2003.
The institute is piloting a program in
Newark in the fall that will try to link adults leaving
prison with job training programs in the first eight to 12
weeks after discharge -- the key time when ex- convicts may
be struggling to find work and be tempted to
re-offend.
The Kids Count report also highlights
which policies work to help families.
The fact that 39 percent of
fourth-graders in the state performed well in reading and
math proficiency tests, compared to about 30 percent of
fourth-graders nationally, reflects on New Jersey's
preschool program, "the strongest and biggest in the country
that focuses on children from disadvantaged homes," said
Cecilia Zalkind, executive director of the Association for
Children of New Jersey. "New Jersey does invest in its
children."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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